Streaming video content over the Internet is commonplace today. Video content providers, including video sharing websites like YouTube, Internet TV services like BBC iPlayer, Google TV, and Hulu, and online video editing services like JayCut, employ a variety of streaming media systems for transporting multimedia to televisions, computers, and portable devices. Streaming video content at a bit rate that is too high may cause packets to be dropped, resulting in corrupted frames and a degraded display of video imagery on the client device. Excessive compression of the video imagery, producing a bit rate that is slower than required, may unnecessarily diminish the quality of the client's viewing experience. In order to insure optimal viewing, automated dynamic adjustments are sometimes made to control the bit rate between server and client according to network bandwidth constraints.
The video playback interface on current video receiving and playback devices typically provides interactive controls that are limited to playback, seek, pause, and stop. Current online video playback systems lack the capability for operating in, and smoothly and adaptively transitioning into and out of, advanced video display modes, such as variable speed playback, frame-by-frame stepping fast forward playback, fast reverse playback, slow forward playback, slow reverse playback, and random navigation of video content streamed over the Internet.